


Scales

by gorefest



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Game(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorefest/pseuds/gorefest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The path to rebuilding a broken trust and what waits at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scales

They're a week beyond Kirkwall on full sails when Hawke has Isabela anchor the ship in an abandoned port. They gather what little they have and make camp on the bluffs, Merrill and Bethany setting up tents, Varric, Dog and Isabela clearing out predators, Hawke starting the fire and working on food. Anders sits in the sand, awaiting orders that do not come.

They eat in relative silence, agree on guard shifts for the night and go to sleep accordingly. In the morning, Hawke, Bethany and Isabela hunt to replenish their stores. Merrill and Dog ward off predators, Varric writes. Anders sits in the sand, awaiting orders that do not come.

This continues for seven days.

Their final morning on the bluff, Hawke and the others march a little ways down from their camp. Anders is awoken by trailing barks from the Mabari hound and peeks his head out in time to see her dark hair disappear over the ridge. He follows their trail, apprehensively.

They stop in a rocky clearing, one that overlooks the pure blue depths and is inhabited by a single, dead tree. Anders watches from a distance as they form a half-ring near its roots. Hawke, who has been holding something to her breast the whole time, presents it to Merrill and carefully unbinds it.

It's unmistakable steel. A greatsword. One that was last pointed at the Champion herself as she stood against the templars. As she stood against Fenris.

_When did she take that?_ flashes through his mind. So does, _why?_ The way she cradles it to her body, as though it were a fallen lover, sends Anders (or Justice, or Vengeance; whoever, whichever) into the open before he can stop. "What are you doing?" There are angry eyes on him from the second syllable, eyes that once glittered with hope and joy, burned with fire and passion, when turned on him. The blood mage answers him, voice as even as it is sad, her approach seemingly unchanged by the clash as she speaks to him.

"We're having a funeral for him. Well, sort of, anyways. We don't have a tree to plant. We're going to use this instead," she gestures to the gleaming metal token. "Hawke asked me to stick it. In the rock, I mean. Make sure it stays there, you know?"

He watches their leader, his friend, his love, closely while Merrill spills the masterplan to him. He can feel his heart hitch. He could almost smile. _That's so like you._ She turns her back on him, hands wrenching around the hilt of the blade. Anders starts to take a step towards them. Her voice, low, dismissive, makes him stop. "You should wait in camp."

No one makes a sound. The order finally came.

Anders returns to sit in the sand on the bluff without protest. The others stand vigil for Fenris and plant his blade deep into the earth, far enough that only the Maker himself could pluck it out, and Varric listens carefully through the whip of wind and cry of gulls to hear the apology Hawke whispers to the freeman.

❦

Within two months, they see the shores of Antiva. The port capital is welcoming enough to them -- it takes them three whole hours to find themselves at knifepoint. Compared to the finesse the Coterie and Carta had in their ranks, their Antivan opponents are babes. The fight is all instinct and muscle memory. A warning, a _kind_ warning to them and any other pickpockets looking for easy coin.

They take their well-defended sovereigns to the tavern Varric deems 'closest kin to the Hanged Man' and pay for room and board. The arrangement falls back on old standards; Isabela and Merrill, Varric and Bethany, Hawke and Anders. No one protests.

After sundown, the group instinctively gravitates to Varric's temporary palatial suite, taking their meal and their ale there, discussing their foreign digs and talking about what comes next. No one seems keen on staying too long, although Isabela thoughtfully mentions what a _shame_ it would be to leave without visiting the brothels and seeing some local color. At some point, the cards come out. They play Wicked Grace and Diamondback into the wee hours of the night, Bethany managing to win out and Varric sharing the material he's working on. ("New lands, new stories.") There's honest laughter for the first time in how many days and it's almost like being in the Hanged Man again, before everything toppled over. The change, the shift, is that while Varric has a lap-full of Bethany and Isabela is giving pointers on all manner of things to Merrill, Anders is not hanging over the back of Hawke's chair, looking at her cards and shooting her conspiratorial glances, crooked grins. The mage is sitting apart. _Just_ apart. Not close enough to be in their ring, not far enough to be out.

_Striking range._

When their cups run dry and their eyes grow too heavy, they abandon their game and disperse. Merrill helps Isabela stagger to their room and nearly tumbles down the stairs doing so. Bethany curls into the nape of Varric's neck -- the first asleep, same as ever -- and Hawke shoots her friend an instructive look before she slips out the door. Anders follows her to their room, silent except for the fill and flux of his lungs.

She strips to her smalls, setting her armor on the dresser with care and her purse beneath the mountain of it. Her daggers find their way beneath her pillow and she looks at him for the first time all day, _really_ looks at him. It's a hollow, unfathomable calm that meets his eyes and it is frightening. He's grown used to her glares , the sharp, disdainful ones she once reserved for Meredith, for the Arishok, for the ogre, turned on him now for creaking floorboards and coughing. The still blue gaze is a new, abnormal terror. A torture he has to guess the meaning of.

Hawke climbs into the bed without a word and turns her back to him. Anders holds his position near the door until she dozes off and then moves quietly to the corner. He sleeps there with his back to the wall, a pillow at his neck and his crook to his chest.

The last thing he sees before slipping into the Fade is the curve of her neck. He dreams of it, of his long lost place at her back, protector and protected, with arms around her waist and his nose buried in her shoulder blades. Her phantom warmth lingers in empty arms when dawn breaks. The tortures begin anew.

❦

Isabela leaves them in Treviso three months later, just long enough to raise the coin, buy supplies and finalize plans. It's a tearless goodbye said with battle-worn smiles and accompanied by promises all gathered know will certainly die in the air. She is bound for a tryst with her tumultuous waters, for the vast horizon and the sting of salt and they are bound for unlikely sanctuary, for the Arlathan forest, the Tevinter border, Qarinus.

If they meet again, it will be at the Maker's call.

Everyone says their peace, one way or another. Merrill thanks her for all the insight on the 'dirty bits' and coos, "Dareth shiral," to the departing raider. Varric admits he'll miss her company, both in taverns and out of taverns, and her literary flair. He specifies he won't miss her cheating at Wicked Grace. Bethany tries her best to have a polite goodbye and it goes to hell when Isabela requests regular updates about her progress with the hirsute dwarva. (When Bethany starts sputtering, Isabela asks Merrill to keep tabs instead.) Anders hands her some poultices, potions and preventatives -- "For upkeep." Hawke grasps her forearm in farewell like they did in the field, at Ostagar, with proper soldiers and proper causes. "Don't get in too thick again, Isabela."

She smiles at their fearless, frazzled, funny leader and blows any chance at a proper ending away. "There's no such thing as 'too thick', sweet thing."

Casting off, the Rivaini captain looks properly herself on the stolen vessel, seven years late but unbridled at last. They watch her sail away for parts and troubles unknown, heading east until she is little more than a speck on the tides.

The remnants turn their eyes westward.

❦

Six months out, Hawke finally uses his name. Not a swear, not a furious gesture, not a _You_ spat like it should be followed by _monster_ , but his name.

It happens in the thick of Arlathan's bones, waist deep in the Elvhenan ruins, flanked by gods whose names were known to the once-upon-a-time First and gods whose names were lost to age and war. A fiend sets upon them, raising up from the depths and churning all the earth beneath it, some ancient, twisted thing disturbed from its rest and seeking the blood of the trespassers. They have magic, daggers, Bianca, but there's no shield to stem the tide. The creature rushes them, barreling through their ranks without mercy, sending their bodies crashing against the broken stone.

The first to rise is Anders and the monster rounds on him, snaking toward the disoriented mage from across the field, talons poised to take blood and bone and more. Her voice cracks the air, heavy with fear and concern she didn't realize she could still muster for him, empty hands scrambling for blades.

" _Anders!_ "

The split second grace is enough, just enough. His flesh splits with energy, fissures of light criss-crossing the wrinkles and worry lines, teeth grit in a snarl. He weaves a tempest of flame with bloodied fingertips, a blaze to rival Andraste's own blessed mark, and sends it hurdling at the demon's body. The fire engulfs it, swallowing the meat and burning away the sinew, while strained, inhuman screams erupt from its burning maw. It rams itself against the crumbling stone walls and the abandoned shrines, beating against pieces of the Hearthkeeper, agony in every cry.

When all that remains of it is a smoldering carcass, the party picks their bruised and battered selves up, and the healer begins tending to their injuries. For just a moment out of the corner of his eye, while doctoring Varric's wounded arm, Anders thinks he sees Hawke looking at him, relieved.

_Imagination_ , he recalls the bowmaster saying, _is a powerful enemy._

❦

They find a rhythm in Tevinter.

Hawke and Varric continue their old partnership, him shaking deals out of thin air, her backing them with coin and muscle, Bianca always the pretty girl on the hero's arm. Merrill begins to hunt down her heritage in earnest, chasing fragmented history through spoils of war, whispers, ruins and legends. Bethany follows behind, begrudgingly at first, there only to stave off the demons that might be lurking under glass, and then with some true investment. Anders falls back on routine, playing healer to those who need it most and rebel mage where no one will see.

It's a delicate line, one he walks poorly. When a job brings to light his new machinations -- contacts in other Circles, missives and plans to distant, embattled allies, the literature he's all but stained his fingers permanently to craft -- he expects the long-delayed dagger in his back. What he receives is defeated silence. What he receives is a look from a woman sundered by magic. What he receives is a blow felt deep in the bone without a raised fist.

Everything else, each little mark of progress, deteriorates.

They come to live _around_ each other, eating their separate meals, keeping separate company, moving to their separate rooms, retiring at the end of their separate days. He does little more than haunt the house, leaving for weeks, _months_ at a time to do Maker-Only-Knows-What at Maker-Only-Knows-Where. She throws herself headlong into the business, into jobs that are little more than the swinging a blade until Delirium and Exhaustion hold her, into jobs that add sovereigns and scars. The two orbit, but never meet.

A year passes before she voices it, that dark thought that was seeded in her stomach at the Gallows. "I miss you," she breathes, back to him and hand lingering on the doorjamb to her bed chamber. He turns, honey eyes studying her frame, searching hungrily for a sign that she was speaking those words to him, to the tangled mess of Vengeance he'd become, and not a ghost who died feasting on her lips and body and voice.

It isn't there.

❦

They feel it before she screams. The Veil twists, Desire and Pride and Rage all pulling at her in the Fade, calling her to succumb, offering the forgiveness and strength and peace she can't find elsewhere for a pound of flesh. Skin crackles, spellwork and spirit together, willing the horrors of the night away. She is theirs, she is marked, guarded and safe, and _how dare they come to her_.

Four restless months of nightmares, of demons praying on her kindness, on her guilt, of her waking in tears and alone has worn down all resignation. It splinters, resolve breaking apart like a dam, and his bare feet thunder across the floor to get there before more tears well up and spill over.

_Hawke, I'm here_ , he thinks, as thirty feet diminish to thirteen, twelve feet diminish to two. _Hawke, don't be afraid._ He's knee-deep on the bed when her eyes find him, suddenly awake, wet and frightened as a child. _Hawke, you're not alone._ Arms twine around her shoulders and hold tight, all the good he has left woven into bone and flesh, transferred with heat and pressure. _Hawke, I'm sorry._ She's grown thinner in these months, just muscle and bone and scars, and she's swept up by him easily when it would have taken the forces of the Bride to move her against her will before. _Hawke, I love you._ It's only when her voice breaks the silence that he realizes he was thinking aloud.

"I know."

Two words breathed into his collarbone, two simple words nailed through him. He had been prepared for her to lash out at him, beat him away with fists and words, snarls and curses, banish him back to obscurity. The slip of arms around his back, the knotting of fingers in his bedclothes, the heartbeat drumming in time with his own; these things are unexpected, relished. When she pulls back, his stomach drops and he begs the Maker to stop this moment from ending.

"Anders?"

Hawke is quieter now than she's ever been. Even her scathing looks were louder. He fights to swallow the lump in his throat. "... yes?"

"Will you stay until I fall asleep?"

It's a baby step, a concession, but it's _something_ and he takes it gladly. Hawke slips into a dreamless slumber with his fingers laced with hers.

❦

It's months of slow-dancing, of the early games replaying with him in her shoes, willing and waiting to cave, doors left wide open in the hopes that there's a continuation of _Them_ somewhere down the line. It doesn't take three years for Hawke to come to him. It doesn't take three words for Anders to crush her against linens and down.

They devour one another, possessed by the clash of flesh and grind of bone, the delicious balance of hips on hips and the hum of nerves. They crash through desperately, marking each other anew -- her with deep red trails down his back, him with purple crescents across the ridge of her shoulders -- all bestial fervor and greedy hands. The peak leaves them singing names like the Chant itself while their bodies quake, pleasure-wrecked and finally whole.

And when she languidly tugs a palm against her mouth to press kisses along his heartline, they smile at one another and pass a secret message: _Mine._

❦

It's on return from Minrathous, from a disappearing act that lasted months longer than he could stand, that kept him mages and miles from Home, that he finds Bethany waiting in her sister's place, just inside the front door and glowering at him, like she's found a spell that can turn a body inside-out and she's just itching to see the results.

She refuses to say what's wrong as vehemently as she refuses to move out of his path. It takes Varric with a gentle hand and her sobriquet murmured in the perfect pitch to guide her out the door. The dwarf looks back over his shoulder at Anders and reiterates whatever unspoken message his Sunshine was trying to get across. Her open hostility pales in comparison to the silent promise thrown out before the door closes. It sets a shiver down his spine.

Confused and quickly divested of his kit and coat, Anders makes his way to their bedroom, the pressing question of _what the hell was that about_ on the tip of his tongue when he opens the door. It's never spoken; one-half -- the question -- falls to pieces while one-half -- the answer -- falls into place.

She's seated at the window, back to the sun, an open book set on her knees, marking her place while she shifts through the papers Varric brought her -- contracts, investment reports, letters from Aveline that talk of Kirkwall, letters from Merrill that talk of her progress. It's a scene he's seen a hundreds of times and yet this one moment stands apart, unique from the rest. The squeak of shoe leather pulls attention to him and she stares, looking almost fearful. The woman who slew a giant, fearful of one speechless man. They watch one another, neither ready to speak, neither willing to move. He swallows, dry-mouthed and dusty. She swallows, steeling herself.

Anders takes the first step, the second, third, fourth, fifth. He closes the gap. Hawke tilts her head down as he nears, papers discarded and hands sliding to her waist protectively. "Was this," he begins, timidly bringing a hand to her chin. "Why your sister looked like she was going to kill me?" There's a laugh from her, something muted, caught between joyful and joyless, uncertain and sure. She takes his hand with trembling fingers, leading it away from her face, guiding it down to rest on the swell of her belly.

When she finds her bravery again, she utters something simple and true, not in condemnation, but in faith. The answer to doubts yet formed, ones anticipated from the late nights, the discussions about his long unraveling life, ones stemming from a chalice and an oath. "Yours." As if on cue, a beat rises from under fabric and flesh, a clumsy wardrum. His fingers prick at the sensation, at the fluttering below his hand, concrete evidence of a second life. Words claw at the edge of his thoughts, ones he knows all too well -- tainted, cursed, _abomination_ \-- but they're shouted down, stomped out, sent to the Void, drowned in each tremor. His eyes brim with tears while his thoughts summon a flood. Anders pictures scraped knees he'll heal, games of make-believe he'll play, nightmares he'll sooth, a trust he will not break. He imagines a lifelong conspirator, one armed to the teeth with safety blankets and blocks, who will stand with him when the Champion shoots them stern looks for muddy shoeprints and smuggling injured animals into the house. He turns to thoughts of lullabies, of the long unused Northern tongue of his Mother, of murmuring the songs she sang to a drifting babe all his own. He wonders if Hawke will listen to the foreign, brassy words he croons with amusement or irritation. He wonders if they will have her eyes.

And when he comes back down from his mind, Hawke is smiling at him like she read every thought. Anxiety conquered by composure. Their victory march is littered with kisses, with jittery excitement and further investigation. They twine together like sparrows in a nest, with his arms wrapped around her and her hands settled on his, tracing patterns on knuckles. Anders nestles his head in crook of her shoulder, pressing kisses here and there on her collarbone while Hawke relays the Story Of All He Missed While Away, complete with well-practiced impressions of the extended family's reactions, and quietly murmurs names to him, the ideas that brewed while he was away.

"Carris for a boy, Ellea for a girl," she mumbles contentedly, playing with his sleeves while he thrums out a gentle reply to their child. _Theirs, theirs, theirs._ "What do you think?" He relents and considers them, nuzzling a crooked grin and his scruffy chin into her neck. "I don't know. What do they mean?"

"Carver and Fenris. Elthina and Leandra." He tenses against her. "Something for those lost to the Chains."

❦

It's in the afterglow of Wintersend thirteen years later, thirteen years from the day on the Chantry steps, full-bellied and bed-warmed, contented, that he hears the Call.

Anders slips from the tangle of limbs with ease, using the remaining grace of his escape artist days, and dresses in silence. He shrugs his old, weathered, stained and repeatedly mended coat over shoulders, laces his boots effortlessly in the dark and ties back his greying hair. His staff, never too far and never too near, is plucked from its waiting place. He turns toward the bed.

A single lick of flame stirs from his hand, just enough to illuminate the dark night, to light up the figure laying there dreaming. She rests peacefully, snuggled deep into the blankets and pelts, body covered up in a much-too-large-and-incredibly-stolen tunic, the sort of smile lines he's long carried slowly emerging at the corners of her lips and eyes. New scars, ones earned by better means. _Two decades._ He smiles and lets the fire flicker out. They were a man who should have died on a templar's sword and a woman who should have died in Wilds, killed by the Horde. They found one another and survived together, somehow. _It was enough._

He creeps downstairs and into another bedroom, side-stepping fallen soldiers and wooden swords and paints and dolls instinctively, approaching a mess of blankets and pillows, of arms and legs and fur. In the valley between two sleeping bodies, a Mabari pup stirs and looks at the encroacher, examining the man who preferred the companionship of Ser Pitterpaws, who her masters hang gleefully off of when he rounds the garden and who never, ever, _ever_ slips her table scraps. Selfishness aside, he is no threat and the hound curls back into the warmth, to drift again into puppy sleep.

Anders settles onto the edge of the mattress, weathered hands smoothing down sandy, bedraggled hair, brushing locks from freckled faces. He listens to the shallow breathing of his children, one-half newts and snails and puppy dog tails, one-half sugar and spice.

He prays his son will master his gift, will stop _accidentally_ singeing his sister's braids, will grow up unashamed and proud of his Maker-granted power, and will know not to abuse it. He prays his daughter will master her temper and her bow, will stop shoulder-checking her brother into mud puddles, will grow up kind-hearted and strong as the Bride, and will go through fire if she is called to. His little Force of Nature and his little Iron Gauntlet. He prays they will both be happy, both be healthy. He prays that the world be kind to them, that Happenstance leave them be, that their lives end in old age, warm in their beds, exhausted but fulfilled.

Finally, he prays they will look after his wild, unpredictable girl in his absence. He prays that the two of them will be enough to keep her from rushing headlong into fights with slavers and raiders and blood mages and conquerors, that they chase off any ill-minded suitors in the way only children can, and that laughter outweigh sorrow in their years ahead.

His feet carry him away from nursery through the kitchen where he'd burned more breakfasts for Hawke than he could count, past the notches in the wall where they'd marked Carris and Ellea's growth, toward the front door where his fearless lady would stand when she was brewing a wicked plan. He hits every creaking floorboard on the way, leaves a scuff mark in his wake and rubs the end of the banister for luck. Ser Pitterpaws, his old, fat friend, winds lazily between his ankles, purring his farewell. Anders scritches his ears in reply. The mage gives the place a final once-over, the ghosts of years gone jumping out from every corner, stories pouring into memory.

It was home. It was a sanctuary of peace and healing.

And when he fell, it would be his last thought.


End file.
